


Daybreak

by ladyphlogiston



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguously Death, Character Death Fix, Gen, Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 11:06:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18827419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyphlogiston/pseuds/ladyphlogiston
Summary: Severus Snape died. Sort of. Sometimes these things are complicated.





	Daybreak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophibug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophibug/gifts).



> I promised sophibug Luna friendship and fluff, and this is kind of neither. But I think she'll like it anyway.

Severus Snape sat up.

The act alone was rather surprising, as he was quite sure he was dead. The Dark Lord had killed him, using Nagini. He'd delivered those accursed memories to Lily's son, and then he'd died. Finally.

Or, apparently, not.

After a moment, however, Snape realized that his hands were oddly translucent, so perhaps he was dead after all. Twisting around, he found that his body was in fact still lying on the floor, and he was sitting in the middle of it.

Snape hurriedly stood up and assessed himself. He wasn't the pearly silver of a ghost, which made sense, as he had never had any intention of remaining on Earth. This world had had nothing for him for decades; the next one could not possibly be worse. But he was translucent and immaterial, even though his clothes were still black and his hands were still their normal color. Even the small blue stain on his index finger from some spilled hellebore was present.

Snape attempted to step away from his body, but found he could not. Turning, he discovered that he was tethered to his body by a shimmery white cord. He tugged on it, but it held firm. He knelt, reaching for the hidden knife that was still in his boot, and then remembered that he was immaterial and probably wouldn't be able to pick up a knife anyway.

Snape briefly wondered why he didn't sink through the floor and into the ground below, and, for that matter, why his skin did not show under his translucent black robes. He decided _not_  to think about it, in case thinking about it made it stop working. He had enough problems without unexpected nudity.

Snape crouched to study his body more closely. His blood had spilled over the floor and begun to coagulate. His body certainly looked pale enough, and he couldn't see any movement. He reached out, but his hand passed through the flesh without making contact, so he was unable to feel for a pulse or a breath. His body lay on the floor, eyes closed, apparently dead, yet he was still here. He tugged on the shimmering cord again.

There were footsteps on the stairs. He froze, listening. Light steps, someone smaller than any of the Death Eaters except perhaps Bellatrix, but too quick for her deliberately languid movements. Too light for Weasley, not quick enough for Granger, too steady for Lily's son. His Slytherins had been warned away from the Dark Lord, and told to stay in the castle if at all possible.

"There you are, Professor!" a voice chirped, and Miss Lovegood stepped into the room, looking him right in the eyes. She smiled. "I hoped you wouldn't have left quite yet."

Snape blinked. He had not anticipated this. Miss Lovegood was dressed in her usual school clothes, though she wore finely tooled leather boots rather than going barefoot. She wore a necklace of sea shells and smooth white rocks. Her wand was tucked behind her ear as usual, but she held a thick black stick in one hand, resting on her shoulder. A ghostly rainbow curved behind her head, like a blade made of nothing.

"Am I dead?" Snape asked.

"You are a gift that is not a present," she told him seriously.

Well, that was nothing new. Miss Lovegood was quite skilled at making potions, but he had long since learned not to ask her questions in class.

He turned back to his body. "Why am I not dead?" he asked.

He heard Miss Lovegood place her stick on the floor, and then she walked over and crouched down, touching his dead lips with one finger. "Well, I don't quite know."

Snape considered that statement. "Do you know some part of it?"

"Do you remember what you swore when you accepted the imprint?" Miss Lovegood asked.

"Of course I do," Snape replied shortly, not wishing to remember the night he received the Dark Mark. He wasn't certain whether the pain or the folly stung worse.

"'Let my life, my soul, and my magic be poured out as a sacrifice, and let none release me until my master does,'" Miss Lovegood quoted softly.

"Where did you hear those words?" Snape demanded, alarmed.

"My uncle told me about them," she replied softly. "He fought against the Dark Lord too, you know, in his own way."

Hesiod Ashbane had been a fool, but a skilled researcher. Snape wondered if he'd found anything useful. Not that it mattered now.

"Why do you mention them?" he asked.

"You have not been released," Miss Lovegood replied calmly.

Snape's brows drew together. "Do you mean to say those sworn to the Dark Lord's service cannot die without his permission?"

"That is what they swore."

"But plenty of them have died!" Snape protested.

Miss Lovegood turned her large, silvery eyes on him. "Do you truly believe that Tom Riddle wishes strength for any but himself?"

"That....is likely true. But it does not account for my current state, Miss Lovegood."

"But Tom Riddle is not your master," she replied, getting up to examine the dust on what was left of a wooden desk, shoved against one wall.

Snape rolled his eyes. "If Albus is preventing me from dying, that would be entirely typical of him."

Luna turned back, smiling gently. "No, not the Headmaster. You have been poured out as a sacrifice, Professor. For whom have you emptied yourself?"

Snape folded his arms defensively. "I have done no such thing, Miss Lovegood."

"You are empty, Professor. For whom have you spent your strength?"

"All I have done is what I must to keep the students safe."

Miss Lovegood beamed at him. "Exactly, Professor."

Snape dropped his hands and turned to pace the floor, but the room was inconveniently small, and his body was lying in the middle of it. It seemed rude, somehow, to simply pace through his own body.

Thwarted, he scowled at Miss Lovegood. "And here you are, a student of Hogwarts. Have you come to release me?"

"Is release what you want?"

Snape snorted. "I certainly have no desire to continue living. There is nothing for me in this life."

Miss Lovegood laughed, sudden and clear. "You are dead, Professor. You don't have to live _this_ life!"

Snape stared at her and was silent. Distant sounds filtered into the room: shouts of victory and groans of defeat, all of them irrelevant now.

He was dead. He had been a dead man walking for years now, but now there truly was no life to go back to. No reason to return.

For the first time in a decade, Severus Snape did not know what to do.

His gaze fell to his hands, to the hellebore stain on his index finger. He'd been brewing for the Dark Lord this morning, making a potion he had developed for the Dark Lord which would incite a bloodthirsty rage in the drinker. Snape was certain that adding four drops of essence of thyme and stirring the elk velvet counter-clockwise would reverse the potion, but of course there was no call for draughts that induced peace and empathy. He had never tried it.

There were so many things he had never tried. Variations on the Wolfsbane Potion, invented to distract himself from the drudgery of service to the Headmaster's pet werewolf. New healing draughts he'd dreamed up during the long hours of brewing for the infirmary. Perhaps he could name one Lily's Draught, if he decided to publish them. He'd even sketched out a potion to acquire fluency in foreign languages, but had never started even the preliminary experiments to develop it.

Slowly the pieces began clicking into place. He had his wits. He had his wand. If he moved quickly, he even had the passwords to at least two hidden caches in Malfoy Manor. Even a few hundred galleons would be enough to start from.

He looked back at his body. Miss Lovegood was waving her hands over it, though whether in healing magic or whimsical dance he did not know. His face looked less harsh than it did when he glared at the mirror each morning, though his features were as awkward as ever. He had no great love for his body, but he found in this moment that he had no distaste for it, either.

"If I decide I want to live," he said carefully, "what would I have to do?"

Miss Lovegood turned to him, and the smile on her face was like the dawn breaking. She picked up the stick she had brought with her, and for the first time he saw clearly that the ghostly rainbow was attached to it, making the blade of a scythe. She carefully laid the scythe on his body, with the head resting on its lips and the base against its groin. She straightened, and stretched her hand out towards him.

"Take my hand."

Severus Snape reached out.


End file.
